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GEORGE PORTER, who died on 31 August 2002, not only was a Nobel Prize winning scientist, but had also earned international respect as a statesman, as a hugely engaging populariser of science, as a spokesman for science in the developing world, and as one who made great efforts to bridge the perceived gap between the "two cultures" of Arts and Science.
George Porter was brought up in Yorkshire, whose inhabitants are caricatured as being down-to-earth, gritty, determined, and perhaps less humourful than those from other parts of the United Kingdom. That he was dedicated to his science, and to his fellow-men, is not in doubt, and he was always incisive and not afraid to speak his mind, so he had some traits typical of his origins. However, in the second half of his life, when I knew him, he was a polished, witty, urbane individual equally at home in academe, in the corridors of power, or in the Institution that he loved, and that was his home for twenty years, the Royal Institution of Great Britain, in Mayfair, London. He could not thus be said to be a true Yorkshireman in every sense.
George Porter developed an early passion for science while at school in Thorne, Yorkshire, so much so that his artisan father bought for him an old bus in which the young George could carry out experiments, thus preserving the family home from chemical disaster. He studied for his first, B.Sc., degree in chemistry at the University of Leeds, where he was Ackroyd Scholar. From 1941 to 1945 he served in the Royal Navy, largely on antisubmarine duty in the Western Approaches, an experience that was to stand him in great stead when he turned to research after the Second World War. That was carried out at Cambridge, under the supervision of R.G.W. Norrish, with whom George shared, with Manfred Eigen of Germany, the 1967 Nobel Prize for the study of fast reactions.
The scientific problem at the time is simply stated. Many chemical reactions take place on a time-scale so fast that following their course in real time was precluded by the slow response of available detectors, yet these fast reactions were those of very significant interest to the community. One...